Paul Gitsham - No Smoke Without Fire

After expressing their condolences to the many family members, Jones and Hardwick were led into the kitchen where Sally Evans’ parents were sitting. The similarity between mother and daughter was immediately apparent, even through the tears and running make-up. The two even sported a similar haircut, although Jane Evans’ hair was running to ash-blonde, rather than the dark blonde of her late daughter.

Bill Evans bore only the most superficial of similarities to his daughter. A tall, craggy man of late middle-age, he had steel-grey hair and a slight paunch. Behind rimless reading glasses, his eyes were also puffy.

After declining a cup of coffee — there was a limit to how much he could drink in one morning — Warren turned to the matter in hand. Focusing first on Mrs Evans, he asked her to recount the events of the night Sally went missing. Again, the details matched exactly those told to the missing persons team and most recently to Jones and Hardwick by Cheryl and Darren.

Moving on to the subject of Darren, Warren asked about the relationship between the two young lovers. Suddenly, Bill Evans surged to his feet, his face reddening. “Don’t speak to me about that man in this house — if it hadn’t been for him, our girl would be sitting here safe and sound, not dead and lying on some…” His voice choked off and, brushing away his wife’s hand, he raced out of the room.

* * *

Warren rocked back in surprise at the man’s sudden outburst. Everything they had heard about Darren Blackheath had been good so far, so why animosity from Sally Evans’ father?

He turned to Jane Evans, who looked as if she was about to start crying again. Visibly pulling herself together, she waved a hand in the air as if to ward off their concern.

“Don’t read too much into that, Detective,” she started. “He doesn’t mean it really. He’s just upset.”

“I’m a little surprised,” admitted Warren. “I thought Darren was popular with Sally’s friends and family?”

“Oh, he is, just not with her father.”

“Why is that?” Warren had been all but certain that Blackheath was in the clear, but obviously at least one person wasn’t so sure.

Jane Evans sighed and took a long sip of her tea.

“Sally has always been a Daddy’s girl and she was the apple of Bill’s eye. She’s our only child and he worshipped her from the moment she was born. Truth be told, I don’t think that any man would ever be good enough for her in his eyes, least of all Darren.”

Warren waited silently as she composed her thoughts.

“Sally was a slow developer at school and she was finally diagnosed as dyslexic. That was a real blow for Bill as he is dyslexic also. It’s silly, I know, but he always felt guilty that he’d passed on some gene. Anyway, the school were fantastic and, with lots of support from them and us, Sally started to pick up the ground that she’d lost. By secondary school, she was scoring average grades and her reading and writing was almost normal for her age. She worked so hard and when she finally got the A levels to go to university we were both so proud. Nobody in our family had ever been before.”

As the topic of conversation switched from her dead daughter to her husband, Jane Evans visibly softened. Warren wasn’t certain where her long, rambling tale about her husband’s achievements in spite of a disability that forty years previously had seen him dismissed as thick and lazy was headed, but he let her talk at her own pace.

“The thing is, Sally may have got the dyslexia from her father, but she also got his work ethic and determination. Despite joining the company straight from school, with no qualifications, Bill is now national sales manager. He’s based in Cambridge, but travels all over the country.”

As the conversation wound its way back to her murdered child, Jane Evans’ eyes filled with tears again. Nevertheless, she forced the words past her trembling lips.

“Sally graduated with a two-one from university. We were both so proud.” She smiled at the memory. “Bill can be a bit abrupt and stern if you don’t know him, but he cried all the way through her graduation ceremony. He truly believed that she could accomplish anything now and I think he wanted her to do all of the things he never got the chance to do. Anyway, she moved back here with us and got a job at the travel agents Far and Away.”

She paused for a moment, before continuing, “At first I think Bill was a little disappointed, but Sally convinced him it was only temporary — she wanted to learn the ropes somewhere small where she could get a lot of experience, before joining one of the big companies and maybe becoming senior management. That was the plan at least, but she’s been there for years now and seems comfortable. Lately, Bill has been pushing her to move on, but she claims that the time isn’t right with the recession. Bill thinks that this is exactly the time to move as he doesn’t think that there will be a future for small independents. They argued about it a lot.” She shrugged. “Sally says her dad doesn’t know anything about travel agents, since he’s only ever worked in sports clothing. Bill says that business is business and an outside perspective is important.” She wiped her eyes with another tissue. “Maybe they’re both right, but they kept on going around in circles and I stopped getting involved.”

“So where does Darren fit into this?”

Mrs Evans sighed. “He’s a tyre fitter and a lovely boy, he really is, but he has zero ambition and isn’t very well educated at all. Bill always felt that Sally should marry a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist — not a tyre fitter. It was something else to argue about.”

“So what was his reaction when Sally moved in with Darren?”

Mrs Evans looked even more sad. “He was really angry. He told her she was wasting her life and tried to make her feel guilty, claiming that she was throwing away all of her years of hard work. He implied that he wouldn’t contribute to any wedding plans and told her not to turn up on the doorstep pregnant and homeless.”

Warren could feel the pain in the room and struggled to find the words to ask her the questions he needed to without upsetting the poor woman further. Again, it was Karen Hardwick who saved the day.

“It sounds as if he really loved her and was afraid of losing her.”

Mrs Evans smiled through the tears. “That’s exactly right. He loves her to bits. I think that with a little more time he’d have come around and everything would have been all right.” Her voice choked slightly. “I guess we’ll never know.”

Taking over from Hardwick, Warren tried to be as sensitive as possible. “I imagine he was worried when she didn’t come home that night. Where was he?”

If Mrs Evans realised that the question was about establishing Bill Evans’ alibi, she gave no sign.

“I called Bill just before we called the police. He was working away in Leeds that night. He’s been doing that quite a bit lately. They have a new branch up there and Bill has been going up to iron out the teething troubles. He stays in a Travelodge hotel near the airport. He came back immediately, made it in record time — he was here by three a.m.”

Warren jotted down the company’s details and made a note to get his alibi checked out. It could just be that this wasn’t a stranger murder after all.

In the car on the way back to the station, Warren praised Hardwick’s questioning technique before asking her opinion on what they had heard so far.

“I can’t see Darren Blackheath being guilty. He doesn’t seem the type.”

“I tend to agree,” admitted Warren, “but we can’t rule him out just yet. It’s possible that he had a motive — what if he popped the question early and Sally decided to turn down his proposal because of her relationship with her father? Maybe he flew into a jealous rage and killed her?”